Hm. Could you tell me, what abmX is? Is it a program that runs on windows or a special driver for the Phillips monitor? Probably Phillips uses some low-level functions of their monitors to quickly scan the pixel colors..
Concerning the program you mentioned - as far as I understand, these are the windows programs, that scan the display area next to borders of the monitor, probably not the most efficient way. I had some experience in win32 programming (windows XP) and I remember that, for example, the GetPixelColor(x,y) function is one of the most slow function of windows API. It takes more than 6000 processor cycle times. (While SetPixelColor, for example, takes only 1000, though it is also a very slow operation). I don't think things changed a lot on windows 7, so if those programs just scan several thousands pixels 20-30 times a second, that is not a good solution.
And I have no idea why Aero and things like that don't work.. Haven't programmed under 7 yet.